Partners in Crime

OK. Is my kid a stinker or what! So Amanda the explorer found a nest in one of the trees in our backyard. Cool huh? We took pictures and were so excited when the babies hatched. Well, my sister came for a visit and with her, my niece and nephew. Well, Thomas and Harper quickly established a great friendship. They have enjoyed playing together and getting into mischief. One day they were out in the backyard for quite a while having fun. Never mess with a good thing I always say. That evening over dinner we asked them what they were doing outside together for so long. "Playing with the baby birds," they replied with a big guilty smile on their faces. "WHAT!!" Oh yes. Thomas knocked the nest down with his sword and they were literally playing with the baby birds. Growing up in a family that worked for the wildlife rescue league, my sister and I knew what to do. To make a long story short we were able to bring the birds up and release them into the wild successfully. Awesome huh?

Blessings,
Mick

Yeah! Thomas doesn't stink anymore :)

We are happy to report that Thomas' cast has been removed! He is happy and healthy and using his arm like it had never been broken. Let me tell you when they took that bad johnny off his arm it was rather unpleasant. The nurse gave me a gauze pad with some alcohol on it to wipe his hand and arm with after she took the cast off. All I know is the pad smelled like Thomas' arm when I was done rather then the arm smelling like alcohol. We went straight home from the doctor's office and stuck Thomas in the tub with plenty of bubble bath for a nice long soak. Needless to say he is a yummy smelling little boy now! Yippee Skippee! He can also ride a bike now too which is nice.

As for me, I have been looking into nursing school and had applied on base because I was told they were offering to pay for 10 people to get their nursing degree. Unfortunately it was for a nurses aid degree. NOT the same thing. Soooooo I have applied to the Wayne Community College and take my placement tests on Monday. I will only be taking one class this summer, but hope to pick up the pace in the fall. I will apply to the nurses program in March 2009 (You can only apply once a year in March) and hope to start the actual nurses program in the Fall of 2009. I am definitely set after much floundering to go into nursing and work in pediatric oncology. I am sooooo excited to be excited about something for a change. I have never had a calling other then to be a Mommy until now. Wish me luck :)

Blessings,
Michelle

Kissing Cousins

OK, don't worry, there really weren't any kissing cousins. At least not in an inappropriate way. Candy, Tracy and I met up at Dad & Sue's mountain home. I am definitely going to like living in North Carolina. I am so close to family that it is fantastic! We had so much fun just hanging around the small town of Boone. Right up the road from the house there is a little creek and waterfall. We took the kids, minus Allyssa and Charlie (they were napping), and enjoyed a nature hike. Amanda found a huge crawfish and everyone got to get their feet wet. Poor Thomas still being in a cast wasn't able to get as wet as Amanda and Harper but he still had a lot of fun.

The rest of our time was spent visiting, eating and drinking. Far to much of the ladder. We were all very silly and had a blast just being ourselves.

Not to much new to report on the home front. Thomas gets his cast off today!!! Yippee!!! I think I will soak him in bleach afterward. J/K but seriously that cast smells soooooo bad. He can't wait for a soak in a hot bath. The poor kid has basically just been hosed down in the shower for the last six weeks. He can't wait to play with his bath toys . I told him he could use my tub. Which by the way, as promised I am including pics of the inside of our house. I wish I could do before and after shots so you could see the huge difference. I will say we are extremely happy now that we are all finished. However, we are now also broke since we have put all our extra money into fixing it up. OK maybe not broke, but you know what I mean. Back to the strict budget. :)

Miss you all!
Mick

Fun in Atlanta

OK I really need to try harder to keep this website up to date. Our first weekend of spring break I got to go and visit my sisters and Mom for the first time in a very long time. We enjoyed a wonderful weekend together. On Saturday we went to my sister Tracy's house and had an awesome walk in downtown Atlanta. We ate outside at a cool pizza place and then walked back to Tom and Tray's house. The kids played together outside digging up worms and popping seed pods. That night we had BBQ steaks and baked potatoes followed by yummy birthday cake. MMmmmm!!! That night we all drove to Candy's to spend the night. After all the kids went to bed we stayed up playing Scene-it and Cranium. Such fun! The next morning was Easter. The kids
ripped into their baskets and we had a big breakfast. Mom left that morning but the rest of us headed to a big beautiful park to play Frisbee. The kids got to do a lot of running around and burn some energy. Woo Hoo!!! The kids all got along well and Thomas now wants to marry his cousin Harper. We are trying to explain why that just won't work. I think time will just have to heal that heart ache :)

Well, that's it for now. Miss you!

Blessings,
Mick

Yeah!

Yeah! We have heat!!! The last two things to be fixed were finally finished this week. The hardwood floors in the master bedroom and the heat downstairs. We were sooooo happy to finally sleep in our bed for the first time since December. Not to mention to finally open all the boxes to the master bedroom and have our clothes back. I have to admit I felt a little guilty complaining about being so cold. Every morning we would have to bundle up before going downstairs. Sweatshirts, socks and slippers were a must. Yet how many people in this world have a home, let alone heat. Anyway... we are definitely excited to be settled in our house and have every box unpacked. I have a lot of organizing to do. We are now on to bigger projects like raking up all the leaves in the back yard. Holy cow!!!! You can tell it hasn't been done in a while. We threw twelve bags of leaves on the trailer today and still didn't get them all raked up. More family fun for next weekend. Anyway... I just wanted to give you an update. I will start training for my triathlon soon. I have slowly been getting back into a workout routine. I just need to learn how to swim. A must for a triathlon huh?

I hope you are all well. We love and miss you all!
God bless,
Michelle

Chaos Is Finally Over!! (I hope)

Well, we are finally here! We arrived at our new home and laid eyes on it for the first time, two weeks ago today. After basically living in our car with very few stops for a whole week, we were so happy to pull in our driveway and call our new place "home." We bought a cute little house on almost an acre of land here in NC. The house was built in 1995 and we new it needed some updating. We purposely chose a house that we could make "our own" by updating it. Since it was Saturday and we weren't going to get our household goods until Wednesday, we went to my Dad's house after dropping off one of our cars and putting most of our diddy move stuff in the house. We enjoyed the comforts of home at Dad's and got to watch the super bowl on a high def TV. (Important for Tom :) We stayed two nights and went home on Monday morning to get started on the painting and updating the fixtures throughout the house. When we pulled into the driveway, I instantly noticed the pool of water in the driveway and thought "hmmm, it hasn't been raining so where did that come from." And there began the fun of our next week. We opened the door to be greeted by much water in the house. As it turns out the flapper valves on the toilets (which were supposed to be replaced by the seller before closing) were not replaced and when the kids used the bathroom the water kept on flowing while we were gone backing up our septic system which unknown to us, had a very large tree root blocking large amounts of water from getting through. This caused all of the drains in the bathtub and shower to flow over into the house for the entire two days we were at my dads. Did I add that we had just had brand new hard wood floors installed before we moved in. Praise God for homeowners insurance. Basically after three days of six enormous fans and two enormous dehumidifiers going 24/7, the house dried out. The duct work under the house in the crawl space had to be replaced and a few other little things fixed. Our hard wood floors are also being replaced all to the small tune of our $500 deductible. I have learned to adopt the phrase, "it could have been worse." And have learned after crying a lot that first day to just laugh deliriously since neither makes a difference and the latter is much more fun. We didn't have any flooding upstairs, and thanks to insurance a lot of things have been updated that wouldn't have been. So, now we have all of our stuff and have unpacked every room in the house except the master bedroom because the floors haven't been replaced in there yet. We had to order more wood. Anyway... we love our new home and have already made huge progress in updating it with paint, light fixtures and appliances. We can't wait to have visitors, although we will have to, since we have to sleep in the guest room until the master bedroom floors are finished.

Moving on to some more great news, I had my follow up CT scan shortly after getting here and there has been no change in my lymph nodes since my last CT! I am so happy. I guess once you have been sick if you have one unusual pain or odd feeling anywhere in the region of where your cancer was you tend to get a little nervous. It brought me great peace to have that CT and know that everything is as it should be.

Lastly but certainly not least, I have to boast about my man. He is usually very modest and doesn't like me to share these things but it turned out he won flight commander of the year for the 12th Air Force. The 12th Air Force consists of several different Air Force bases. It really is a big deal and I am very proud of him.

Thank you again to all my friends and family that have been praying for us. It has certainly made a difference during this very stressful time.

Blessings,
Michelle

On our way!

Wow! I thought the time would never come. However, tomorrow we leave on our first leg of the trip to North Carolina! I am defintely feeling a whirlwind of emotions as I say good bye to what has been our home for the past three years and look forward to what will be our home for.... who knows how long. I am praying for a nice long stay in NC but I have faith that no matter where we go or for how long, God is guiding us to the place and time that is best for us. He has never steered us wrong. The kids are feeling the same emotions as I am. Amanda has made a great "kindred spirit and bosom friend," to quote the book she and I just finished reading. (ten points if you can figure out what the book was) Amanda's friend Breje lived two houses down nine years ago when Amanda turned one in Oklahoma and we were so excited to see her name on Amanda's fourth grade class list last year. Breje's mom threw a little good-bye/slumber party for Amanda last weekend. Even though Amanda is sad to leave Breje, she knows that she has friends in NC that left here a year ago which she will get to see. Amanda and Breje already plan on going to college together so she will be sure to see her again. Thomas has made his first real "best friend," here. They had there first sleep over last weekend as well and I know that one will be hard to say good bye too. They lived two doors down when we were still in our house and Nathaniel keeps telling his mom that he wants to go to Thomas's house. At six they just have such a hard time understanding.

I am posting some pictures from Tom's "fini-flight" in the squadron. It was a typical Hancock family drama show. See, we (the kids and I) are supposed to squirt him with a fire extinguisher filled with water when he gets out of the plane. So we took our positions as he climbed out of the jet. Amanda had trouble squeezing the lever while Thomas was holding the hose so I grabbed hold of it and squeezed, Thomas let go of the hose which flew through the air and squirted Amanda in the eye. So she is crying, I am trying to console her, Thomas is holding a hose that won't squirt and Tom is standing there going "Wow this is fun." Amanda then screamed that I "did it on purpose." I got frustrated and grabbed the fire extinguisher and took out my frustration on Tom. Than I felt much better, Tom got squirted and Thomas had a blast helping me :) Amanda eventually got over it and apologized to me. Anyway... what a clown act we are!

Tonight is my farewell from the wives. It is sure to be a tearful event. If I remember to bring my camera I will show some pics. Sorry it took so long to post again. We have been crazy busy with good bye's and the kids last minute sleep overs and partys. We miss you all!

Blessings,
The Hancock Clown Show

A matter of time

It was only a matter of time before the kids came down with pink eye. Even though Tom and I washed our hands so much that they are cracked and sore, the kids got it. Yesterday morning we took Amanda in then last night Thomas showed signs of it as well. UG! The good news is that other than being highly contagious, there is no real pain involved with pink eye. It is just annoying! The bad news is that the kids can't go to school for at least three days. I am going to rip my hair out!!!! Luckily I bought a children's French lesson kit at Barnes & Noble a few weeks ago and this is the perfect opportunity to work on it. Amanda has been dieing to learn French and honestly I wouldn't mind learning either. We had our first lesson today and while I don't think Thomas will quite get as much out of it as Amanda, we all had fun. The kids are out in the back playing in the foot of snow that fell on the ground yesterday.

Hope you all have a great day!

Love and miss yah,
Mick

Back To Blogging

Well, I immediately regretted canceling my old blog. I didn't realize how connected it kept me with my family. So the Hancocks are back in our new blog. In case you couldn't figure out the reasoning behind our blog address, it is the first two letters of each of our names. I am sure you all read my Christmas letter and know that we are now living in a TLF on Mountain Home AFB. The TLF is not bad. It is really old but aside from that is pretty nice. We have two large bedrooms. Living room and a kitchen that is nicely stocked with dishes, pots and pans. Our dogs are even quite cozy. The TLF's used to not allow pets and in the last two years started offering pet friendly TLF's. YEAH!!!

I hope everyone had a great Christmas and new year celebration. We were fortunate enough to spend Christmas with family. We drove to Reno and stayed with Tom's parents. Christmas morning was spent with Tom's parents, and his sister's sweet little family. Our kids had a blast opening all there presents and playing all day everyday until we went home on December 31st. That is when the real fun began. Sunday night (Dec 31st) my eyes started burning really bad. Tom's mom had been diagnosed with pink eye two days after we got to Reno so it didn't take a genius to figure out what was going on. I went to the emergency room first thing in the morning on the 1st. Sure enough I had pink eye in both eyes. I also had an awful head cold and sore throat but stupid me only had the doctor check me for pink eye. Well, Saturday morning Tom's throat hurt so bad he went to the emergency room and he tested positive for strep throat. The doctor was nice enough to give him a bottle of antibiotics for me too since he had just seen me on Monday and new I was sick too. Tom came home and took a nap while I ran the kids to the store to get more dayquil. When I got home and fed the kids I went up to check on Tom and as I sat down on the bed to wake him he turned to look at me and couldn't open his right eye. The look on his face as he laid back and said "@#$%" made me laugh so hard. I couldn't help it. So now we both have pink eye and strep. It is amazing since we are both green tea drinking, vitamin taking, hand washing germophobes. Oh well, such is life. We just keep praying for our kids and hope they will continue to avoid the superpower germs!

Well, that is our new year story. Hope yours is less eventful. Miss you all!!!

Love,
ToMiAmTo